Gregory asks Haley Barbour to explain "the differences between Reagan's leadership on the economy and what you're seeing out of President Obama so far"
November 08, 2009 2:40 pm ET
From the November 8 edition of NBC's Meet the Press:
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Contrary to media hype, Sarah Palin is very unpopular
Why is Rupert Murdoch so clueless about Fox News?
Media Matters: Dobbs, dropped
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When Reagan should have paid down the debt created while resolving the recession, he tripled the debt. Reagan then slashed taxes and regulations on the investing class causing bubble after bubble.
The elder Bush started to rein in the growth of the deficit and then Clinton actually began paying off the debt.
Reagan-II came into office and made up a ten-year budget projection, budgeted within one half of a percent, giving his friends huge tax cuts in order to meet Grover Norquist's goal of bankrupting the government.
Keynes was and continues to be right. If conservatives would something about economics we'd be in much better shape.
Most gas lines were during Nixon-Ford, they ended during Carter, and Carter also appointed the successful Paul Voelker, who stayed on during much of Reagan.
1. Boosting an already growing economy will eventually throw the economy into a deep tailspin, like now.
2. A boosting strategy implemented on a permanent basis will eventually throw the economy into a deep tailspin, like now.
The key to balancing the economy is to pay off the debt when things are going well.
Conservatives have no understanding of BALANCE.
And you might notice the comment attributed to Haley is a link to satirical coverage of MTP.
(Note to self: NEVER forget the <satire> tag around these parts!)
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Yep......and raised them mostly on lower and middle class folks and doubled the social security withholding.
In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion.
According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year.
In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate.(doubled it actually)
This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.
In 1984, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act.
This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar-sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again.
Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first 2 years.
And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.
The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect.
According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today's economy.
Azz wud I heard.......somewhere.
Well all I can say is this: His cabinet especially his Secretary of Treasury - Donald Regan - favored "Reagonomics". His biggest achievement was making brokerage firms go public because he figured them being under cartel rules.
Here is a little insight on what he did before the being secretary:
During his tenure in these two positions, Regan also pushed hard for an end to minimum fixed commissions for brokers, which were fees that brokerage companies had to charge clients for every transaction they made on the clients' behalf; Regan saw them as a cartel-like restriction. In large part thanks to his lobbying, fixed commissions were abolished in 1975.
The payment of commission as remuneration for services rendered or products sold is a common way to reward sales people. Payments often will be calculated on the basis of a percentage of the goods sold. Common industries where commission is used include car sales, property sales, insurance broking and many other sales jobs.
A side effect of commissions is that in some cases, they can result to salespeople resorting to dishonest and fraudulent business practices in order to increase their sales.
Hmmm??? We been having alot of scandals involving commission in sales have we?
"...the differences between Pres. Reagan's leadership on the economy and Pres. Obama's leadership on the economy thus far" or something like this:
"...how you would compare and contrast Reagan's vs. Obama's approaches on economic affairs, at the same stage in their terms but obviously facing different conditions..."
The second graph shows the income trends from 1979 to 2005. It’s a much different picture with the richest group seeing the highest income growth. This graph illustrates the supply-side economic theory that has been prominent since Ronald Reagan was president. The “trickle down” economics did not in fact reach the lower wage earning groups.